An Ode To NATO’s Mission In Libya
On October 20, 2011, a low-resolution video shot in Sirte, Libya went viral. It showed a motley mob of about 20 mutineers shouting what sounded like insults at a 69-year-old Bedouin — their prized ‘catch’. The old man’s face was bloodied; he looked dumbfounded and was perhaps making an attempt to beg for mercy. Moments later, the aged captive was dead, his body used as a trophy.
The old, khaki-clad Bedouin was Muammar al-Qaddafi. Though both his life and his 42-year rule in Libya were marked by eccentricity, his death could not but evoke empathy. NATO’s mission creep — a spin-off from the powers granted to it by U.N. resolution 1973 — was complete.
Toppling Qaddafi by Christopher S. Chivvis — who was with Pentagon at that time and currently works for the U.S.-government-funded think tank RAND Corporation — is an ode to the intervention. Though it does express scepticism in a few chapters, its overall tone is one of approval and, at places, celebration. Long on technical details and short on depth, it reads more like a military template for future interventions than a genuine soul-searching effort.
Chivvis puts on the back-burner an honest attempt at understanding the uprising while expecting the reader to genuflect to the restraint practised by the U.S. as it decided to step back and allow France and Britain to dominate the mission. This, even as it supplied the bulk of the arms.
Some questions the book could have addressed include: Why did the rebels decide to script such a grisly death for Qaddafi — a patriarch clearly in his autumn? Was his overthrow the result of foreign conspiracy, considering that he had antagonised quite a lot of regimes due to his fiercely independent foreign policy? Was Libya really on the verge of genocide when the West decided to intervene?
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http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/book-review-an-ode-to-natos-mission-in-libya/article6350743.ece
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